The Farm

The College Farm is one of the oldest continuously operating student educational farms in the United States. Its enterprises currently include beef cattle, hogs, poultry, goats, field crops, horticultural crops, honey bees, and aquaculture. Much of the cropland is USDA certified organic and the Farm maintains animal-welfare certifications on several of the livestock enterprises. In 2013 the College opened a campus farm store in the renovated, historic Broomcraft Building located on the edge of campus, adjacent to Farm. It’s equipped with a kitchen and meat-processing room and offers foods produced by students working on the Farm as well as products from nearby farms and small businesses in the central Appalachian Region and throughout Kentucky. The Farm also regularly supplies pork, beef and fresh produce to the campus dining hall.

Berea College offers a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Agriculture and Natural Resources with a broad foundation in the fundamentals as well as opportunities to focus in specialty areas. The program emphasizes critical inquiry, practical experience and innovative problem-solving. The College Farm functions as the primary educational laboratory, offering labor positions to students and providing a compelling place for course activities, undergraduate research, student projects, and internships.

Graduates with a BS in Agriculture and Natural Resources find employment in a wide range of careers including USDA cooperative extension, Natural Resources Conservation Service, state divisions of forestry and water, farming, agritourism, environmental protection, land-use planning, public health, non-profit organizations, agrichemical and biotechnology companies, research, consulting, and academia. Berea graduates are distinguished by their integrated knowledge and the practical experience they gain in their labor program and broad, liberal arts curriculum.

Most people are aware of the importance of honey bees (Apis mellifera) to our food supply. They pollinate many of the fruits and vegetables eat year-round and are critical for pollinating forage crops used to [...]

As yields from global wild fisheries have plateaued, aquaculture has played an increasingly important role in supplying seafood to satisfy the growing market demand. The United States imports about 90% of its seafood – mostly [...]

The Berea College Farm produces a variety of certified organic staple grains like wheat, barley, rye, oats and corn. These crops are grown in rotation with hay crops and pasture to protect soil quality and [...]

There’s an old saying that some things, like sausage, are best appreciated when you don’t know how they’re made. But on the Berea College Farm transparency is one of our goals. Our pastured hogs are [...]